Historical Films And Accuracy...The Best And The Worst (WW2, war, Roman)

[Grandstander]

I understand that Hollywood is in the entertainment business and that when an historical or biographical film is made, it is most often with the caveat "based on historical" events so that it is distinguished from being a documentary.

Thus, I do not have a problem when due to the necessities of dramatic flow, several historical figures are capsized into one representative person, or events are overlooked because it would take too long to portray them. On the other hand, when Hollywood simply takes historical events and makes up an entirely new story which is in contradiction to the known facts, then I become annoyed.

This thread solicits your ratings for the five most accurate, and five least accurate historical films. Here are mine:

Most Accurate:
1) Tora, Tora, Tora......it will be difficult to find another film to compete with this one for the top title. It is almost a documentary and there is not a single fictional scene in it. There are no events depicted which did not actually take place, no words placed in anyone's mouth which are not either backed up by documentation, or at least represenative of the type of thing that this person must have been saying. Every character and every event portrayed were real.

2) A Bridge Too Far....a few capsized characters, a few capsized events...but in general, the film follows the Cornelius Ryan historical book with great fidelity. It was also one of the very few films I have seen to portray shells bursting in the air rather than the traditional puffs of dirt on the ground. Shells were supposed to burst in the air...the ones that exploded after they hit the ground were less effective because a large percentage of the fragments are simply getting buried rather than spread. The film also was the first that I recall to depict the walking barrage, showing the serial advancement of the explosions which the attacking troops followed. I loved the scene where they showed us the German artillery unit having to crouch in the woods, watching the approaching walking barrage and knowing that very shortly, it would be walking on them.

3) Nicolas and Alexandria....while the film makers were obvioulsy forced to invent the specifics of private conversations amomg the figures being depicted inthis movie about the Russian Revolution, all of the events shown were very real. The characterizations created were also in keeping with what the historical record says of those people. The film was actually a bit duller than it needed to be because of the film maker's refusal to take dramatic license with events, but it had integrity.

4) Alamo....the recent Billy Bob Thornton effort, not the John Wayne epic. Among the three theatrical and two made for tv portrayals of the siege and battle, this was the only one that made an effort to stick with the facts. It was the only one to portray the final assault as it actually happened...taking place in the pre dawn hours and taking the defenders by surprise. It was the only film to include the evidence backed probability that David Crockett survived the battle and was executed after the fortress had fallen. The relationship between Travis and Bowie was accurate, and the depiction of Crockett as being the victim of a miscalculation on his own part, also squares with the historical record.

5) The Battle of Algiers....deliberately made so as to appear to be a documentary with actual footage, this film was another which stuck with the known facts rather than adding "drama." If you did not know better before seeing it, you would most likely have thought that you were watching a documentary with genuine footage of the events.

Honorable mentions...The Longest Day, Zulu, Zulu Dawn.


And The Worst:

1) The Charge of the Light Brigade....this was the 1936 Errol Flynn picture, not the 1968 David Hemmings effort. (The latter was reasonably accurate.) About the only thing that rang true with the Flynn picture was that there was a cavalry charge and it took place during the Crimean War. But by this film's account, it was not a blunder, it was heroic and saved the day for the British and French forces. Further, the reason for the charge was some sort of personal duel between Flynn and some rival he had first crossed swords with in a campaign in India. The ending is a bit ambiguous, but it hints to us that the charge was a success. This movie was a crime against history.

2) They Died With Their Boots On...Errol Flynn once more. The movie was actually quite enjoyable, as fictional entertainemnt, but it did grave violence to the actual facts of Custer and the Little Big Horn battle. By the movie's account, Custer went to his doom with full awareness that his command was going to be wiped out, but took them in anyway in order to save the infantry of General Terry which the film informs us, would have had no chance against the mounted Sioux warriors. The Last Stand is depicted as being the product of a carefully planned Indian ambush, when in fact the Indians were taken completely by surprise and their victory was an ad hoc one, the product of massively superior numbers and nothing else.

Earlier in the movie, they also made Custer the main hero of Gettysburg, rather than depicting the marginal role he played in the marginal, inconsequential cavalry battle of July 3rd. They also still had Winfield Scott in command of all union armies..in 1863.

3) Pearl Harbor....if one is to believe this film, then one must believe that the Japanese plan of attack was the following:
350 aircraft to stage the attack, divided so that 50 bombers and torpedo planes went after the ships in the harbor, 50 bombers and fighters went after the airfields on Ohau, and 250 fighters were assigned to personally follow and kill Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett wherever they went. I was also quite disgusted by the decision to give the WW II era prop driven fighters, the same aerodynamic qualities of the X fighters in Star Wars. They could turn on a dime, fly in between buildings at street level and defy the laws of gravity and centrifical force whenever needed. And of course while two American fighter pilots did manage to get in the air on December 7th, they certainly were not the same as the bomber pilots who later flew the B-26's on the Mitchell raid.

4) The Alamo....the 1961 John Wayne directed effort...This had so many things assbackwards that it is hard to know where to begin. They had the Travis and Bowie roles reversed in that it was Bowie who defied Houston's orders to blow the place up and retreat, not Travis. The episode where Crockett leads a party to destroy the Mexican heavy artillery would have been more believable if the Mexicans had actually had any heavy artillery there, which they did not, only field guns. Bowie was not depicted as becoming ill at the start of the siege as happened in real life, but of being wounded just before the final assault, which takes place in daylight, and is the second attempt by the Mexicans to storm the fort. (There was only one assault.) Wayne portrays Crockett as a man who heard about the Texican struggle for freedom and rushed to the Alamo to do his part in that battle for liberty and justice. In reality, Crockett came to Texas looking for political opportunities after having been turned out of Congress by the voters of his district. Crockett came with the mistaken idea that the war part was already over. And of course in Wayne's heroic version, there is no attempt at balance. We never learn that Bowie was a former slave smuggler and land swindler, or that Travis was in Texas because he abandoned his family in Alabama and was fleeing from creditors whom he could not pay. We learn nothing at all about the Mexican viewpoint on matters, they are just Snidely Whiplash style villains.

5) Tie: The Fall of the Roman Empire/Gladiator.....interestingly enough, while these films both depicted the same events, the latter took its history not from history, but from the first film, which was almost entirely fictional save for using real historical characters within the fictional storyline. It may be unfair to include these because they really were not marketed as true historical films.

Dishonorable Mention:
Sante Fe Trail....another Errol Flynn vehicle which trashed facts in favor of drama
Walker....could have been great, tremendously interesting subject and story with no need at all to change anything, but instead was some surrealistic piece of crap that made no sense whatsoever.

[jtur88]

I think, at one time, The History Channel (AKA "The Hitler Channel") used to air full length films, and during the breaks, would cut to the studio where knowledgeable historians would comment on the the pictures. Not quite like MST3K, Ibelieve they mostly used pictures what were seriously intending to reveal actual history.

Grandstander, I presume you are excluding pictures like the Vivien Leigh classic biopic "Caesar and Cleopatra".

[PA2UK]

Well the Trojan War is more myth and legend than history but the movie Troy still annoyed me. The epic legend of the Trojan War is a part of cultural history which to me, is just as important.

I can accept many of the adaptation for the film were necessary. It was already a long film so cutting out elements unnecessary to the plot are acceptable. The Oath, the Judgement of Paris, the fact that Paris was left to die because of Cassandra's warnings and therefore raised by a shepard, etc. I can even accept the combination of several characters into Briseis. And I can understand cutting out involvements of the Gods and Goddesses for the sake of realism.

(Spoilers warning)

What I can't accept is plot changes which completely alter the meaning of the story. I don't care if it's Hollywood and it "has" to have a Hollywood ending. Anyone who has ever even heard of the term "Greek tragedy" should know that the Trojan War is an epic greek tragedy and not just because Troy falls at the end. Paris dies, Menelaus doesn't, Helen goes back with Menelaus, Andromache is captured and her son murdered. And slightly less important but I always found it one of the most powerful moments of the myth - Agamemnon's sacrifice of his own daughter and his wife's revenge on him for it. Although I can understand the latter being removed for the movie (not really necessary for the plot and difficult to include since the movie ends with the fall of Troy), I think the sacrifice is an important part of understanding Agamemnon's character.

I simply can't understand why they would not keep the original ending, as tragic as it is. There's a modern Hollywood version of Romeo and Juliet and as horrible as it was, it stayed true to the plot, tragic ending and all. To me, the way they changed the ending of the Trojan War would be like making a version of Romeo and Juliet in which the pair do not die at the end. What is the point of that?

Okay, rant over. On the plus side, there is an enjoyable amount of eye candy.

[my54ford]

Look for the movies "The Winter War" and "Stalingrad" Both forigen made films about those episodes of WW2 Very accurate and graphic.

[odanny]

Originally Posted by my54ford

Look for the movies "The Winter War" and "Stalingrad" Both forigen made films about those episodes of WW2 Very accurate and graphic.

Yup, both great films. Really loved "Winter War", a Finnish film based on the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939. Also recommend the great German film "Sophie Scholl", based on the White Rose resistance group.

Another historically accurate film from 1962 is "The Longest Day", with an all star cast, based on the book by Cornelius Ryan.

One of the absolute worst films was "Enemy at the Gates" which tried to turn the most bitter battle of WWII into a love story. The premise of the movie, a duel between two snipers (Koenigs and Zaitsev) was probably fictional, as while Zaitsev was indeed the best sniper of WWII, Koenigs probably never existed.

[mofford]

Bridge Over the River Kwai, has to be one of the most inaccurate WW2 pictures ever made. The idea of a POW commander negotiating with the enemy commander, to get officers out of hard labor detail, what a joke. Then the brittish commander taking so much pride in the bridge that he would stop it's destruction......what a load of crap.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by mofford

Bridge Over the River Kwai, has to be one of the most inaccurate WW2 pictures ever made. The idea of a POW commander negotiating with the enemy commander, to get officers out of hard labor detail, what a joke. Then the brittish commander taking so much pride in the bridge that he would stop it's destruction......what a load of crap.

The film was fictional, based on a novel which of course by definition was fictional.

[Trudy Rose]

What about "Das Boot"...That was an excellent film
Das Boot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by Trudeyrose

What about "Das Boot"...That was an excellent film
Das Boot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As your link reveals, that film is also based on a novel, not on any specific historical event.

What I had in mind were films that are supposed to be about actual historical events, such as Waterloo or All The President's Men or Sink The Bismark or such.

A different category would be a film or novel that is set in the middle of some historical event, such as Gone With The Wind or Saving Private Ryan, or one of Shakespeare's historical plays, but it is understood by the audience that this is not meant to be actual history.

Historical films and novels may graded on how closely they stick to the actual facts of the background against which the film or novel is set, but not by the same standards you would use for judging a film that supposedly is a depcition of actual events, such as the ones on my list.

[mofford]

What about Kelly's Hero's or The Dirty Dozen, Telly Savalas did such a good job with his psyco rotine, just had to believe the historical accuracy on those two grand films. What ever happened to the german guy with the tiger tank, the one they split the gold with at the end ?

Oh, and I thought Telly could never top his Twilight Zone performance as the loving father in "Talking Tina".....
"My name is Tina, and I'm going to kill you"

Sorry, just had to get that Telly Savalas thing out of my system.....please ignore and proceed.


I do think Lee Marvin was great in "The Big Red One", a little more accurate than the Dirty Dozen. Von Ryan's Express was almost too good not to be real.